


if this is paradise, I wish I had a lawn mower

by rainbowBarnacle



Category: Kagerou (Webcomic)
Genre: Awkwardness, Dissociative Identity Disorder, Fluff, Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-20
Updated: 2013-06-20
Packaged: 2017-12-15 15:29:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,554
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/851135
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rainbowBarnacle/pseuds/rainbowBarnacle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>'Heyoka Jones: Examine your life choices while living with your roommate's alternate personalities.'</p><p>This is a fic set in <a href="http://archiveofourown.org/users/VastDerp">Vastderp's</a> comic <a href="http://www.kagerou.org/">Kagerou</a>. You can find a nice summary of what it's about <a href="http://vastderp-placeholder.tumblr.com/post/14858553938/frostedswitchblade-can-you-make-a-rebloggable-version">here</a>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	if this is paradise, I wish I had a lawn mower

**Author's Note:**

  * For [VastDerp](https://archiveofourown.org/users/VastDerp/gifts).



Here are the things you know about Kid:

He wakes at around five in the morning _every_ morning to catch various before-school cartoons. By the time you shuffle out of bed, he's been zooming around your house like a hyperactive kitten with a ball of fluff. Some days he _is_ a kitten, and if there's one thing you're unprepared to deal with before coffee, it's an eight-year-old in a teenager's body attempting to rub himself against your ankles.

At least he is more open to various food options than Kano is, even if his favorites include sugary concoctions that you swear raise your glucose levels just by looking at them: maple syrup sandwiches, chocolate syrup oatmeal with gummy bears, lingonberry jam eaten with a spoon, grapes with sugar, peaches and sugar, strawberries and sugar, toast and sugar...You're pleased to note he is just as fond of your tofu scramble or your vegan sausage with hash browns as he is of any of his culinary wonders, so many mornings you're spared the sugar high.

He likes having his nails did. If you need him to settle down for the evening or if something dampens his spirits, all you need to do is bring out your nail polish collection and he will sit still for ages while you give him manicures and sometimes pedicures. If he's having a particularly bad day (he saw the double-meat bacon burger commercial, the neighbor's cat rejected his cuddle advances again, he hallucinated a sobbing woman inside the wall who called him a filthy brat) you paint flowers or ladybugs or bunnies.

Sometimes this results in amusing mornings where Kano will wake up and demand why the hell are there frogs on his nails.

You've never met anyone his age who liked baths so much. One day you gave him a leftover set of bath beads and he was in there for hours, squishing them and watching the colored oils seep out. Sometimes you can hear him creating little narratives or holding one-sided conversations (you _hope_ they're one-sided) while he shampoos and conditions his hair over and over. Some days he decides he is a fish and insists on staying in there all day—until you mention that you found _The Fantastic Adventures of Unico_ at the rental store and he magically grows legs again. Oftentimes when he emerges, his finger pads wrinkled prunes and his skinny hips wrapped in a towel, he'll ask you to brush and blow dry his hair until it's pure silky softness, a bright, flame-colored wing. 

Throughout your apartment, random objects acquire names, pasts, and personalities. You learn your toaster is an ex-con named Gomez who's on the lam again after he stole forty wedding cakes. Hilda the stove dislikes it when you make baked ziti. (Judging by how Kid picks at it, you suspect Hilda is not the only one.) Vernon Dursley, your shower curtain, is hideous and lonely. 

His favorite game is Mario Paint. You forget how many times you've rented it now (sometimes you think it would be cheaper to just buy the damned thing) only that you've woken up to its cheery chiptune music more times than you can count. One morning you discover him draped upside down over one of your kitchen chairs in a way that makes you hurt to look at, oblivious to everything else while he concentrates on beautifying a coloring book page.

“Dear. God.”

“Do y-you like it?”

“I don't have the words for how awesome that is. Why are you sitting like that?”

Kid pauses in coloring in a mushroom and looks up at you, dead serious. “M Growing taller.”

“ _Growing t_ —” A giggle escapes you and you press your face into your hand. “But Kid, you don't _need_ to be any taller.”

“That is very nice of you to say but I want to be taller and that is what I will be.”

You end up losing an entire afternoon you _should_ have spent putting the finishing touches on a lolita gown helping Kid rummage through your pile of old projects for anything that might make him look taller. Somewhere between looking through your sketchbooks and rummaging through trash bags full of abandoned outfits, you realize you are beyond help, you have lost control of your life and you don't give one minuscule fuck. It's worth it later to see him swaggering around in black pinstripe pants and a matching blazer with enormous shoulder pads, pink heart barrettes in his hair and rainbow nail polish on his toes. 

A week later, he abandons the idea of tallness and decides he wants to bulk up instead.

He spends his idle hours on your back patio, making magic potions out of clover and petals or creating tiny graveyards for dead bugs while you gather laundry from a clothesline. Your face hidden by sheets and pillowcases, you're allowed to grin while you listen to him chant magic words or make up eulogies for dried-up little moths, the huddled bodies of daddy longlegs, and most of a shockingly green dragonfly.

He likes you. He likes you a lot. You learn this one afternoon while sauteing onions for stuffing. It is your first Thanksgiving in this apartment, and while you're not _too_ keen on the holiday's overall theme, you figure the best sort of revenge against wanton nationalistic colonialism is to cook a giant meal and enjoy it with loved ones.

You've been cooking since nine that morning. You are vibrating from the four cups of coffee you've downed since then, your thoughts buzzing all over the place while you juggle various dishes: nondairy macaroni and cheese, spinach, corn, cornbread onion stuffing, mashed potatoes, biscuits, yams, and the dreaded tofurkey.

You've never cooked a tofurkey before. You hope to god it tastes good.

For dessert there is pumpkin pie and also your grandpa's _woja'pi_ , a thick berry sauce you like to eat over ice cream—made, alas, not with the chokecherries of your childhood, but you figure raspberries and strawberries with honey will do just fine. That glorious stuff has been simmering for the past forty minutes and the smell of it is driving you batty.

But as far as prep time goes, you're having fun. You can't tell if it's because you're all glittery with caffeine or if it's the ridiculous kidlet standing on a footstool he doesn't need while blowing enormous dishsoap bubble towers in your sink with a bendy straw; all you know is that this feels good, it's nice. Dr. Di Lucien was right—the best sort of families are the ones you create yourself.

Then Kid's voice rings out a hair too loud over the sound of caramelizing onions: “Hey Heyoka, I'm g-gonna _marry_ you!”

You look at him and quirk your lips wryly. “Oh you _are_? Am I gonna design your wedding dress then?”

“No! I have to make you one!” He locks a grave stare on you, his bubbles forgotten for the time being. “And w-we gotta live in a house by the ocean and I'll make you tofu scramble every morning and keep like a bazillion s-s-sugar gliders, okay?”

You snort. Turning the burner off, you start transferring the onions to a bowl. You add cornbread pieces and start mixing. “This wouldn't have anything to do with a certain documentary you got from the library, would it?”

“Maybe. And we gotta have rabbits too. And some cats.”

“I think this may be the best marriage proposal I've ever heard.”

He tips his head back and giggles at that. “Yeah. But we don't gotta kiss if you don't want to.”

Kid is still grinning goofily when you cover his eyes with one hand and plant a kiss on his forehead. It leaves a lipstick print behind. “ _You_ , sir, are a perfect gentleman.” Cupping his face in your hands, you squish his cheeks and lean close. “ _Never_ change.”

“Okay.”

“Now, I'm almost done here, you wanna go put in _Addams Family Values_ while we wait for the rest of this stuff to finish cooking?”

“YEAH!” 

Kid bounds off the stool and into the living room with a wiggly bonelessness that doesn't match his gawky older body at all. You listen to him bounce around singing a loopy, off-key rendition of the movie theme and think that soon Kano is going to wake up again and you'll experience the mental whiplash of seeing him grumping and moping at everything under the sun. You'll have inevitable arguments. You'll share dramatic silences followed by painful, awkward apologies. You will fall asleep together on the couch, and neither of you will talk about it later.

There will be the usual array of unanswered questions. You don't know where Kano goes when he's not here. You have no idea how many people are inside him. You're beginning to think he doesn't know these things either.

You might be wondering for the rest of your life.

You finish mixing the stuffing and put it in a glass casserole dish. While you check over your other dishes, you acknowledge the snippet of a song lyric that's been running on loop in the back of your mind all morning. One word is wrong, but you don't bother correcting it.

_Don't leave me standing here  
I might get used to this lifestyle_

**Author's Note:**

> \- [Talking Heads - Nothing But Flowers](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=068AFYvd58E)


End file.
